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Odds and ends and odds

My life would be so much better if I didn’t have to work and was rich. Actually, I like working. If I could just trim some of the mundane, mind-numbing tasks from my job and keep the good parts, I would be happier.

I like work that doesn’t feel like work. And sometimes I have that type of work. Just not as often as I used to.

***

Robert Frost, my man, you were wrong about fences. Wrong, so wrong.

Good fences don’t make good neighbors

I feel like I’m playing a real-life game of Risk in my neighborhood. My argumentative neighbor hasn’t said anything to me since the day we disagreed on how he should speak to my wife. And he hasn’t said anything to my wife since then, which is even better. But times are tense here in the land of palm trees, cement and brown lawns.

I do, however, feel better about loading up my house with security cameras and the soon to be built Berlin Wall II. I have East German-like clandestine meetings with my neighbors on the side of my house in the dark, where we whisper about what we’re going to do about the country so intent on causing pain and suffering to its neighbors.

We’ll see how it plays out, but it makes me wish I was a renter right now and could give my 30-days notice and move.

It’s amazing how much stuff my wife and I have accumulated over the years. I long for the days when I moved to California and all of my possessions fit in a brown Camaro with a 1-inch round hole in the driver’s door where someone shot it with a slingshot one night.

Holy crap, kitchens are expensive. If my wife and I don’t move, we’re going to remodel our kitchen. We’ve lived with the current one for over 15 years. The grout is chipping away. One drawer won’t shut and points upward when you close it. The giant fluorescent light fixture covers the area with nasty light and fills up with dead bugs and debris. Our stove is black; our stove hood white. The face of the dishwasher falls off sometimes.

Yes, we are the most frugal people in the world. But even we don’t feel like being pigs anymore and would like something nicer – a smooth countertop, no grout. Handles on the cabinets. Ah, to dream.

***

Grind away

I’m going to the dentist every week these days. All because I chewed through my bite guard a few years ago and was too lazy and busy being sick to replace it.

I’ve eaten my own teeth – cracked and polished them like river rocks made of glass.

I blame the stress of CF and going to bed many nights not 100 percent positive I’d wake up in the morning.

So, my public service announcement tonight is . . . see a dentist and get a hard plastic bite guard if you grind your teeth. You’ll save your teeth, thousands of dollars, and more importantly, you’ll avoid annoying lectures from dental hygienists who can’t wait to tell you “would have, should have, could have.”

4 thoughts on “Odds and ends and odds”

Dear Sir of real Americashire,
I fitted my own kitchen 5 years ago to save money, I can come over to the land of cement and fit yours for you in return for free board and lodge and a starring role in your big brother house full of cameras! Perhaps we could sell the footage of us building your kitchen to a top TV network, seanset & UC build a kitchen sounds a good title?
I can provide you with photos of my A1 top notch fitted kitchen as reference to what a good job I would do if you would like.

BTW I would expect you to provide a bullet proof vest as part of the deal, better still you could employ @onlyz as security!

You’re in rare form on this one. I can only imagine the kitchen you’d build. Out of Lego? I can see you demo’ing the kitchen then taking off for England and leaving me with an undone kitchen. Nice prank.

Yes, send photos and make sure they’re of your kitchen, not the neighbor’s.

And, yes, you’ll need bullet-proof protection in my neighborhood. @onlyz would make a terrible security guard. He’d be sleeping in the chair on the sidewalk.

My kitchen is in dire need of a remodel, too, and I’m absolutely dreading it! I think my house was built in the 1950’s and I’m pretty sure the kitchen looks exactly the same as it did back then. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true because I’ve cleaned it at least twice. 😉

The kitchen is the worst because we need to use it each day. The contractor said he could hook up our stove outside. We may do that. But a month of that will be a grind. Ours was built in the 50s too but was upgraded to Home Depot cabinets (low-end models) at some point. They’re terrible.

BTW, there is a very good Consumer Reports issue on the newsstand with lots of good kitchen advice. It’s helped a lot. Now please send me 30K. 🙂